“Secret Twitter” organizers headed to Senate hearing

Turns out that Congress likes to know about secret plans to develop disruptive technologies in foreign countries.

The AP reports that government creators of version of Twitter for Cuban citizens designed to undermine Cuba’s government in Cuba are expected to testify before a congressional hearing next week. The senator calling them in says the idea was “dumb, dumb, dumb.”

Administration officials on Thursday defended the program, saying it had been “debated” by Congress and wasn’t a covert operation that required White House approval. But two senior Democrats on congressional intelligence and judiciary committees said they had known nothing about the effort.

The ostensible hope of the “Cuban Twitter” was to provide a digital network that Cuban citizens unhappy with the communist regime could use to organize dissent, and possible change. While this is no Bay of Pigs, anytime government officials’ plans to meddle with a foreign government come to light, as they did yesterday with the AP’s story on the program, people involved tend to be called into Congress.